Abstract
Due to the complexity, high-risk and conservative character of construction companies, advanced digital technologies do not become widely adopted in the short term, while vendors make determined efforts to overcome this and disseminate their technologies. This paper presents the methods of an investigation addressing the extremely complex issues related to the current practices of digital technology adoption in construction. It discusses how construction companies follow a specific logical process linked to need, project objectives, the characteristics of the adopting organization and the characteristics of the new technology to be adopted. The study aims to demonstrate a novel method of data collection and analysis, such as data and methodological triangulation techniques, including the use of NVivo and AHP to explore how companies make the decision to uptake new technology (e.g., advanced crane, tunnel boring machine or drones) by focusing on customer and vendor activities, their interactions, contributing factors and people involved in the process. The major original contribution of this paper is developing an innovative methodological cube for investigating the Construction Technology Adoption Process (CTAP) covering technology adoption, acceptance, diffusion and implementation concepts. CTAP is a framework that delineates the phases of the process that customer organizations use when deciding to adopt a new digital technology and the parallel vendor activities. The significance of these contributions is that they enable vendors to understand how to match their strategies with customer expectations in each phase of CTAP. It also provides a benchmark for new construction companies to use the current best practices of decision making. Future research is warranted to more clearly delineate any differences with respect to developing nations or related industries such as mining and property management.
Highlights
Innovation plays an important role in maintaining a competitive advantage for firms and meeting the evolving demands of industry [1,2,3]
Previous literature indicates that the only individuals involved at this stage whose opinions are sought regarding the factors in the previous section are top managers
This paper presents how the hypotheses were systematically tested, that the industry follows specific decision processes linked to the pre-adoption process for investigation and the post-adoption process for implementation
Summary
Innovation plays an important role in maintaining a competitive advantage for firms and meeting the evolving demands of industry [1,2,3]. Increase in productivity during the mid-1980s when this technology was introduced by Caterpillar [11]. This leads to a growing focus on introducing new technologies [4,12,13,14,15] to the construction industry by various firms in order to benefit from such advantages [16,17]. It is desirable to expedite the technology diffusion rate, and so, technology vendors and suppliers try to facilitate the technology adoption process with supportive activities [19]. Knowing which activities are truly supportive requires a deep understanding of the process undertaken by construction companies in deciding to use the technologies
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